Talkin' of difficult languages, what about the "easiest"?
Much has been said of Bahasa Indonesia and various pidgins (esp'ly Bislama
and Tok Pisin) bein' extremely easy to learn in terms of both syntax/typology
(bein' mainly SVO - or what is now currently called AVP/SV - type languages)
& morphology (mainly isolating/analytical).
Wonderin' if the following South East Asian languages have some things in
common, I am sleeplessly curious about the fairly detailed word order
typologies* of the following languages:
- Yue [Cantonese]
- Min Nan/Minnan [Southern Min] (Chinese/Sinitic/SINO-TIBETAN)
- Vietnamese
- Khmer (Mon-Khmer/AUSTRO-ASIATIC)
- Thai
- Kadai (TAI-KADAI)
- Bahasa Indonesia (Malay/Malayo-Polynesian/AUSTRONESIAN)
* what I would like to know is in regards to:
basic word order;
main clauses (OV or VO);
adpositions (prepositions or postpositions);
genitive - possessor -and head noun (N-G or G-N);
head noun and modifier (N-M or M-N);
relative clauses and head noun (N-RC or RC-N);
comparatives (Adjective-Marker-Standard or Std-Mkr-Adj);
verbal auxiliaries (Aux-V or V-Aux);
question particles and/or question words (sentence-initial or
sentence-final); affixes ... if any (prefixing or suffixing).
I am plannin' on basin' the syntax of a conlang _Trÿpang_ or _Sowth Chinÿ
See Pijjin Inglis_ (_ÿ_ is "schwa") on my findings. {ok, I am - AGAIN! -
changin' my conlang pidgin - from Kaoz Babul Pidjin to Trepang... same basic
aim - different, more intriguin' approach. Besides, I am _loco_ over any
language named after an edible sea slug and Bislama/Beche-le-mer is already
taken ;)
czHANg